MELONS.
The family of the cucurbits includes both vegetables and fruits. Here the squashes, pump kins, and cucumbers hobnob with the watermelons and canteloupes. All are fleshy seed-vessels, with abundant seeds, attached along three distinct areas of the wall of the cavity of hollow kinds, and similarly located when the flesh embeds the seeds. The name, pepo, is given by botanists to all such fruits.
The watermelon grows wild in the hottest regions of Africa. Livingstone described the vines as covering vast areas, and the natives feast ing on the abundant fruit, which, though small, was not bitter. Size, sweetness, and flavor have all been added by cultivation. Egypt first begun the improvement of the wild watermelon, and thence it has spread through all sunny, warm regions of the earth. It is able to thrive in semi desert regions, furnishing a thirst-quenching fruit in summer where other fruits are scarce, and water a luxury.
Watermelon culture in the United States is a great commercial enterprise in Georgia, and neighboring states, which ship their crops to northern markets, and grow all they can eat at home. The negro's natural affinity for "de wata million smilin' on de vine" is not hard to explain. And his proclivities in the direction of raiding a patch by the light of the moon have been developed against his will and disposition. Much rather would he help himself by day to the fruits that lie there, just as in the equatorial belt of the dark continent they lay to tempt the thirsty to take and eat. Why is Nature's plain invitation to-day hedged about by restrictions? Private ownership makes all the trouble, and puts the taking of a melon on the list of misdemeanors, if not crimes. In spite of this, the people of the sunny South, black as well as white, have little to pay, in money or in labor, for all the watermelons they can eat through the long season. What's more, they get the best, because the sweetest, thinnest-rinded, best-flavored melons do not bear shipping.
Northern gardens have a short-growing season, but there are quick-growing varieties of water melons suited to their needs. By starting the seeds in flower pots, or berry baskets, or planting them in inverted sods, the young plants are well along when the time comes to set them in the garden. A great saving of time is thus achieved.
Liquid manure or other quick fertilizer forces growth, and good culture does the rest. The best soil is a light, warm, sandy loam.
White-fleshed melons may be sweet and fine flavored, so may the yellow-fleshed varieties. But the American taste prefers a red-fleshed water melon, with black seeds, and not too many of them — all in a thin, but strong, protecting rind, pre ferably dark green.
California is a great state for watermelons, because of the intense heat of some interior valleys, and the warm climate of all the lower half of the state. The earliest crop comes to market from inland in June. July and August have the heaviest yield. An acre produces, on an average, a carload of marketable melons. This means one hundred dozen. They run up to one hundred pounds and over; a twenty-pound melon is con sidered the smallest size to sell. Smaller ones would grade the whole lot to their level, and that doesn't pay.
The record in size is held by a Georgia melon weighing 134 pounds. California boasts the next one, which weighed 131-1 pounds.
A hard-fleshed, globular watermelon with little sweetness is the so-called "citron," whose thick flesh is used for making sweet pickles and other preserves. It has no relation to the true citron we get in candied form. That is a near relative of the orange.
The muskmelon, or canteloupe, grows wild on the coasts of Guinea, in Central Africa, and in southwestern Asia. The fruit is tasteless, and does not exceed the average lemon in size. Who could see and taste that unpromising pepo, and dream of a Rocky Ford or an Emerald Gem! Every country with a hot climate, and light, but rich, sandy loam can grow this most delicious of garden products with little trouble. Northern states have a short season, but they grow the best melons and most of them. New Jersey produces one half of the crop grown in the United States. It supplies the great cities of the North Atlantic coast.